Tory Times Are Tough Times

The ugly truth about the Conservatives' economic record is that it's a story of political survival, not national interest.

The notion that Conservatives can be trusted with the economy has by now been thoroughly discredited. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives continue to make that implausible argument.

However, this narrative has not been unique to Canada. Republicans south of the border have been saying that for years. And there, too, the argument is belied by the facts.

In the U.S., the granddaddy of fiscal conservatives, Ronald Reagan, presided over soaring spending increases and record tax decreases, racking up a deficit of $200 billion. George H. W. Bush left a $300 billion accumulated deficit, while his son, George W. Bush, gave the rich the largest tax cut in U.S. history. The younger Bush’s tax-slashing, big-spending ways left his country with a record $482 billion deficit, two wars, and a financial system in tatters. By contrast, that “tax-and-spend liberal” Bill Clinton left office with a $200 billion surplus.

In Canada, the story is much the same. In their 10 years in office, the Progressive Conservative governments of the 1980s never once presented close to a balanced budget. In 1993, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien inherited an accumulated deficit of $487.5 billion. At the time, this represented approximately 72 per cent of the GDP. It was under the Liberal watch that the tough job of chipping away at those deficits began. In 1997, the government posted a surplus - the first in decades. And a surplus remained until 2007, when the country went back into the red barely a year after the Harper Conservatives took office.

As my father – a lifelong union man who taught us how to be disciplined in our household budgets – used to tell me: “Tory times are tough times.”

Canada’s Public Accounts underline the point: as a share of the GDP, net debt in 2006 was 32.8 per cent, and down 41 percentage points from its peak of 73.9 per cent on March 31, 1996. Canada’s balance sheet was repaired by the Liberal governments of Chrétien and Paul Martin. They accomplished this through tight management of program spending, some program cuts, revenue increases, expanded trade, and a growing economy. So much for those “tax-and-spend Liberals”.

Since it was elected in 2005, Harper’s Conservative government has reversed that positive trajectory through needless and expensive tax cuts in the wrong places, tax increases in the wrong places, and spending increases everywhere else.

This gross mismanagement and economic incompetence didn’t start with the mind-blowing $1.3 billion price tag for two days of meetings, the $16 billion for untendered jets to fight the Russians, or the $12 billion for new prisons to deal with a declining crime rate. Under Harper, the federal debt grew by $5.8 billion in 2008-09 and by $53.8 billion in 2009-10, and is expected to grow by $49.2 billion in 2010-11 and to continue growing through 2014-15 at least. In just three years, all the debt repayment of the previous eight years will be wiped out.